CraftyEngineer

Silhouette, silhouette, how do I love thee...

My apologies for not posting since, uh, August, really? Wow, that's the longest I've gone without posting. I've been making stuff, I think. Who knows? Isn't it crazy how time is flying? My oldest said to me the other day... "Mom, this year is really flying by." WHAT? Kids are supposed to feel that way. I didn't that way when I was his age. 

Anyway, so back to crafting. Silhouette has this DIY advent box kit for sale and since I threw ours away last Holiday season because it was broken in many places (it was cute... from Pottery Barn, I think, with little doors and such - it lasted several years!), I was tempted to get it. However, I don't have a lot of time to get it done. But then I kept seeing how other crafters had made one and read about how Silhouette gives you all the box templates and everything is all there for you. Ok, sold. 

It came in Wednesday night before Thanksgiving! Perfect timing. Something to do during the holiday weekend! If I had to wait until next week, it would have been TOUGH to get it done by Thursday with the kid's school stuff getting in my crafting way!

The hardest part of making this... picking out my color scheme. I have boys. It has to be boy-ish. But I wanted it to look clean. I'm not a fan of red so the traditional red and green combo was out. I like blues. I typically lean towards snowflakes (ironic since I live in a 99.9% snowfree zone and don't like the cold). But they are pretty. In theory.

My color combo is Chocolate Brown, White, and Aqua/Teal/Turquoise-ish. 

Silhouette is SO awesome. They even provided the template to cut the back of each hole. See the blue in the back here:

While this project took a few hours, it wasn't hard at all. I used white vinyl for the numbers and then the snowflake stickers are from Hobby Lobby. They turquoise and silver and are puffy and sparkly.

I hope you like it! My boys do and best thing is it's done and ready for filling for December 1st! Have any suggestions for what to put in the boxes?

Have a great day! Hope your Thanksgiving was full of reflection and family and friends!

Week of the Young Child.

This past week, April 10-16, was Week of the Young Child. My son's preschool celebrates this week by inviting parents into the gym at drop-off or pick-up to create a handmade card for your child. The card is then delivered to the child's classroom and displayed for your child to see.

Okay, so, probably only my fellow stamping sisters out there will truly understand the pain this week causes me. :o Don't get me wrong. The idea is wonderful! The displays are awesome! It's me. Imagine walking into the gym... construction paper, glitter and glue everywhere and foam stickers too. I can't create like that. Or even attempt to make anything. Complete and total shutdown of anything creative. Anything. Then comes the stress of making something. You have to make something. Your child is waiting at the receiving end. I am awful at creating on the spot without my stuff. Sounds snotty, I know. It's not supposed to... it really is stressful. Maybe I need a therapy group. So, 2 years ago (remember this is year SEVEN of preschool), I decided to stop stressing myself out and just make a card at home. The bottom line is the boy needs a card. That's it. It goes into his folder at the end of the year and comes home. Great. A constant reminder of the artwork I made him. Forever in his scrapbook. Sigh. Stress. It's a bleeping card for pete's sake. Anyone out there understand how I can't create on the spot and w/o my stuff? Silly, yes.

Anyhow, here's this year's card. Nothing spectacular but my son loves it. He loves blue. He loves stars. And well, he's still young enough to think glitter is cool for boys. Ssh... don't tell him about the scalloped card ;). It's another Accucut die... it's called convertible #2 and you can put various shapes in the middle to make cut out windows, like this star. The yellow cardstock is glitter cardstock from Best papers. Love that stuff.

 

Happy Early Child Week! And thanks for listening to my inner voice scream...

 

Last Day of Preschool - preschool friend's gift

Wednesday was my youngest's last day of preschool for this school year. It's SUMMER VACATION. Okay, well my older one still has 8 days of school left...

I like to give the kids a little something from my son for an end of year gift. At Valentine's this year, my 2nd graders gave these out to his class as his "valentine". I think it's a great idea (not mine!) and I happened upon the Accucut die when it was on sale for $10! The die is a puzzle and it's 4x6. So, take a 4x6 photo and make it into a puzzle. It's only 6 pieces but perfect for kids!

I used a group photo of his class and made them into puzzles!

*note - faces smudged on purpose for privacy and all that.

I ran out of time on getting this done so the packaging had to be quick: little ziplock baggie (jewerly) and a stamped label on top. Good thing the audience is a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds! HA!

Don't you just love the "happy summer" sentiment by A Muse? Works perfectly for this gift from my son to his friends!

Tomorrow... the teacher gifts!

Holiday Crafts! Part 2 - Cub Scout Ornaments

Last year, my son made "tiger" cub scout ornaments. This year, he's a wolf. He wanted to give something to the kids in his den so he made wolf ornaments. Thank goodness, A Muse came out with a wolf stamp!

I thought he did a great job coloring (remember this is the boy that *hates* doing ART!). He put some Martha Stewart Snow Glitter under the wolf, too.

All stamps by A Muse Artstamps: (Wolf and Classic Number set; Copic Markers, MS Glitter, Silver Cord, Accucut tag dies

Happy Halloween - Preschool Treats!

Happy Halloween! Let the eating season begin... Halloween to Easter! ;)

Just to catch up... I went to Seattle last weekend for A Muse instructor training. It was a blast! Got to see lots of the A Muse gals... always fun, inspiring and generally an all-around great time! I flew up a day earlier because of the way the flights worked out, etc. My dear friend, Edye flew up with me and we shopped all day Friday. All day. We hit a lot of stamp stores and paper stores and even made it down to Pikes Market for lunch. It was so much fun. On Sunday after training, I got to visit my niece Sara, who lives near Seattle and attends then University there. That was fun to catch up with her. More about the Instructor Training later... but I learned some cool tricks and I can't wait to try them in some classes!

Okay, back to Halloween... since I got back Monday evening, it's been a whirlwind of school activities, meetings, and getting geared up for Halloween. Yesterday my preschooler had a small party in his class sans mommies... he said it was fun! We made some treats for him to share with his classmates:

It's a little die cut box (made from my Accucut machine). Inside contains a little playdoh and a halloween shaped cookie cutter ($2.99 for 20 (I think) from Hobby Lobby). The pumpkin cutout is a Martha Stewart big punch (which punches well on A Muse cardstock but nothing else! - the Orange Polka Dot cardstock is from A Muse's Kitchen line)

I'll post teacher gifts soon.

Hope you have a SAFE and fun Halloween! Don't forget to set your clocks (YAY!). More time to stamp ;)

Back to School (kid gifts)!

Okay, well I couldn't just make something for the teachers and nothing for the kids, right? Well, what do you make for 2nd graders when you don't know the class yet. I mean I have a class list and I know most of the kids in there but still, what if there is some last minute switching around, etc.

So, I wanted to make something:

1. useful
2. generic
3. cute but not baby-ish... they are "2ND" graders (can you hear my son saying "I'm in  2nd grade now M.O.M." in a tilt-your-head-duh-kinda-way? highly annoying by the way!)

Hmm, up for the challenge? Sure, why not. I know. How about trusty old bookmarks? Okay, so I didn't say "fun" was one of the criteria but bookmarks can be fun. Right?

These bookmarks are laminated so as to last until at least the end of this week ;).

All stamps by A Muse Artstamps. *Did I mention that I love, *LOVE* the back to school release! :)

What do you think?

Happy Tuesday! And happy first day of school to everyone else that I know that got that one extra day of summer!

M-I-C-K-E-Y... MOUSE!

Who's the leader of the club
That's made for you and me
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
Hey! there, Hi! there, Ho! there
You're as welcome as can be
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse!

Forever let us hold our banner
High! High! High! High!

Come along and sing a song
And join the jamboree!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

Now, you'll have that song in your head all day!

Gotta love it when you can get 10 invitations done from start to mailbox in an hour - um, ESPECIALLY when the party is 10 days away! ACK! Luckily, it's a family party so everyone already knows about it! Whew.

My youngest turns 3 on March 7th! YAY! For this past year, Mickey Mouse clubhouse was big in our live! So, simple and quick is the name of these invitations. I've had the design floating in my head for a while, just no time to actually get it done.

So, I suppose the old Mickey Mouse song was the "M-I-C" version and the new hip, happening one is the Hot Dog song. And Toodles... you probably don't know who Toodles is if you haven't seen this version of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. But my son likes it. :)

I'm a bit of an electronics gadget freak (go figure). So I got myself a new printer the other day. One for my stamp room. We have one of those HP does everything already but I wanted a invitation printer that I could feed paper in without it getting bent. My dear friend, Edye, who owns LMNOPeople, is in the business of making invitations and personalized notecards (at an AFFORDABLE price!) told me about her Canon printer. So, I researched and researched and found a little mobile Canon that is SUHWEET. I like it. And made this invitations super simple. I just fed the A Muse notecards directly in and voila! I use MS Publisher. Oh, since I'm mentioning Edye... one of my most FAVORITE things she makes is the itty bitty people books with 12 pictures in it... GREAT GIFT for grandparents or teachers! OMG. Remember that.

The Project Hero Mail challenge/contest ends today with all items needing to be postmarked by today to be sent to me. So, I'm on the lookout for them. I've received quite a few already and can't wait to see how many cards we've made for the troops! More soon!

25 days of projects - day 19: 1st Grade Bookmarks

My son's first grade class is a big "do work all day" (his words, not mine) kinda class. I thought it would be fun to make personalized bookmarks for all of the kids to help make reading fun. The real question: Stamp them or design them on the computer? Well, truth be told that I was running outta time. These were due Wednesday morning and as of the cub scout meeting on Tuesday night, I didn't even have a design in my head! ACK! So, the computer won out for sheer speediness. I did stamp one part and color that. Can't not stamp, right? Finally at the end I cranked up the laminator and laminated them for good measure. Have you seen how hard kids are on their bookmarks?

I printed a cute poem I found on the net about first graders:

I thought the poem was cute! It reads:

Now That I Can Read

I used to need somebody

To sit and read to me.

I'd look at every page they read

and listen carefully.

But now that I'm in 1st grade,

I'm filling up a shelf

with stories, poems, and other books

That I can read myself.

How are your holidays going? I think I've finished the shopping except for one inlaw, which my DH will take care of. I pretty much ordered everything online this year. I signed up my son's school as a non profit organization that receives money back from online merchants (like the big ones... amazon, ebay, b&n, eddie bauer, etc, etc.) so for every purchase I make up to 37% (yes, 37% - of course depends on where, etc... but the avg is 3%) of my purchase goes back to my school. Isn't that cool? I signed us up a couple of months ago and it's been fun watching the "free" money add up. Anyway, I'm happy to not go out and shop. I *don't* like to shop. Of course the hard part is figuring out what to give! I haven't started my holiday cards yet but they are on *the* list. So, soon. :) I'm well into the *party* part of the season and have a few more to go to this weekend. But pretty much it's smooth sailing from here on out... YIPPEE!

Happy Friday!

25 days of projects - day 18: Cub Scout Ornaments

Tuesday was our last cub scout meeting until after the holidays. Back in the beginning, the boys came up with a list of what a good scout is. We wrote those on a poster board for them so see at each meeting. We light a candle at each meeting. The candle burns until one or more of the boys do something that is not what a good scout is. When the candle burns down, the boys get a pizza party! So, long story even longer... the boys got their pizza party on Tuesday night. How appropriate to have the pizza party the last day before the break!

I wasn't certain we were going to the party because 1) the weather was awful that day 2) my son is a non-pizza eater (REALLY! I know! WEIRD!) 3) well, honestly I didn't feel like going. But, um, well, yeah, we - he and I did go. So hours (LITERALLY... at 3:30pm Tuesday), we start making gifts for his cub scout friends. *We* decided to make cub scout ornaments.

We are the tiger cubs this year. You would not believe how much time I've spent looking at very, many  manufacturers for a tiger die. Seriously. Well, wouldn't you know it... one of the Cricut cartridges I *ahem* already own has a tiger! (an aside... I am seriously loving that I get to pull out some of my tools/stuff to do all of these projects! So fun to use some stuff I haven't in a while!) And the colors this year are blue and orange. So, 2 hours later, we had 10 of these made. I hope them like them. I did handwrite the year, den and pack numbers (although that's hidden in the picture).

The ornaments are actually the medium weight square coaster that I cut to 3.5x3.5. Then we covered them with SU! Brilliant Blue CS on both sides. I used my Apricot Copic to color the coaster edges so that they wouldn't be white.

Not too bad for 10 in 2 ho urs, right? I was really thinking we weren't going otherwise I would have punted on this project and saved it for something else in the Spring.

But hey, I'm happy that I had a tiger die in my *stash* of stuff. Maybe I should shop more in my studio! LOL!

Happy *last* day of school for us and I hope you, too! Seven more days ... WOHOO!

25 days of projects - day 16: Polar Express Bells for the kids

The Polar Express... it is such a good movie. And a great book, too. :D

Yeah, so okay, this is a similar rendition of a thing I did last year for my son's kinder class. I got the idea from a friend that did something like this for her daughter when the movie came out back in 2004. And I've loved it ever since. I'm going to drag out the belief as long as I can... and I'm sure you know... people out there are just plain mean and tell your kids things that they shouldn't about what is real and what isn't. Already this year, two different people have tried to tell my DS about the man in the red suit and his reindeer. Humpf. Don't do that. But I've been lucky to guide him where I think his heart wants to be. The time from when they get the whole concept to the time they start disbelieving is incredibly (!!!) short. I didn't think I would have the conversations I've had this year about this already.

ANYWAY, so I made some bells (30) with the tag that says:

One thing I got *smarter* at doing this year is color coding my boys' stuff... so one kid got all red and the other green. Makes it MUCH easier to sort out and deliver. They are coded because their "from name" is on the back of the tags. Novel idea, eh? Only took me a couple of YEARS to think of that. <insert rolling eyes!>

See you tomorrow.